Phishing Attack has taken on a new meaning with 90% of data breaches that an organization succumbs to has got to do with phishing. What makes Phishing attacks so successful. Here are five pointers that are worthy of blame:

Users are the weakest link:

Most users are the weakest link as they open spurious emails and attachments without recognizing the mails and realizing that they are phishing attempts. With scarce training all year round, organizations are less confident about their users being able to recognize a phishing attempt and related cyber threats.

Organizations are not taking enough pains:

Organizations aren’t doing enough to thwart attacks related to ransomware and phishing while pointing out 3 key areas of weaknesses:

Sparse Backup Process:

In the event of a ransomware attack, organizations are unequipped to deal with them due to insufficient backup process that leaves servers unenriched by content immediately again and to user workstations that remain unhealthy and in a dormant state.

Lack of User Testing:

Organizations do not test users with procedures and hence serve as a weak link in determining user susceptibility with regard to an attack. It is to be prepared for such testing times that a simulated one-off test can be conducted on phishing mails to see the user level of preparedness and immediately take preventive steps to improve your cyber security stance.

BYOD Security Risks:

Often organizations lack a definite BYOD policy to restrict malware and phishing attacks to target your system and creating a weak link to access your company data and system resources illegitimately.

Criminal hands are well funded:

Criminal ganglords are well funded and are flush with funds to publish technically more advanced versions of their malware.

Cyber Criminals are training their guns on a new-found path:

The availability of stolen data on the dark web has got down the price of this spurious data and the tainted cyber players have found a new earning source. Subsequently they found information holders who could target with their ransomware and phishing attacks. The information holders with their pricey data are willing to pay the criminals any amount to recoup their data.

Phishing Tools are cheap and found at large:

There are numerous tools that are available to help amateurs with learning phishing tools and ransomware as a second hobby. The rampant availability of phishing kits and spread of ransomware as a service (RaaS) has brought ransomware into the limelight with amateurs taking this as a suitable recourse to become amateur cyber criminals.

Wrapping Up:

Inorder to stem the phishing attacks and ransomware attacks it is most wise to protect organizations against phishing. This is done by educating the employees as they come first in a long cycle of unprepared staff and weak networks and systems that open up to the fraudulent attacks quite cheaply. It is of importance to restrict your employee’s security behaviour by imparting training. The problems of phishing, spearphishing and ransomware are simply going to get worse without proper security measures in place.

Regardless of whether it’s HIPAA, FINRA, PCI, or other administrative concerns, know your clients’ verticals, and know the law. What information must be kept (and for to what extent) can differ altogether starting with one industry then onto the next.

For more information, visit www.dataresilience.com.au or drop us a note at [email protected]